Sen. Debbie Smith not optimistic about any gun legisaltion in Carson City

Tuesday, Nevada Newsmakers taped its second show in the Capitol Rotunda in Carson City.

So far, both guests have been Democratic leaders – Senate Majority Leader Mo Denis of Las Vegas and Sen. Debbie Smith of Sparks, chair of the Senate Finance Committee.

If there is a theme emerging from the interviews, it’s: Don’t expect a lot in gun legislation from the 2013 Legislature.

Despite numerous gun-related bills – campus conceal and carry bill, stricter guidelines with gun ownership and mental health, limiting the size of magazine and types of weapons that can be sold – it seems as if nothing, or close to it, will get passed.

“I don’t know yet what will come out of this session,” Smith said to a question posed by host Sam Shad. “Even the mental health hearing, because I am on that committee, was very tough. People are really opposed to looking at background checks, combined with the mental health issues. So I don’t know where it is going.”

It’s a far cry from what lawmakers heard less than two years ago, when five people died and 14 were injured in a mass shooting at the IHOP restaurant, just down the road from the Nevada Legislature. That cry returned after the Newtown, Conn., shooting this year.

“After the Newtown shooting, really that is all we kept hearing: Do something about mental health when it is connected to guns, so we will see," Smith said.

Yet Smith is not optimistic.

“Not particularly,” Smith said. “There is just an intense amount of public outcry with this. I am amazed with I look at the LCB opinion poll about the amount of input on those issues.”

Denis said on Monday that he held out hope that legislation dealing with guns and mental health will pass.

Sen. Ben Kieckhefer, R-Reno, has one of the mental health-gun bills that may stand a chance. It faces a do-or-die hearing today in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee.

His bill would ensure that the mentally ill who are involuntarily committed to state mental institutions are blocked from buying guns by including them in national database used to check the backgrounds of gun buyers.

We’ll see how that goes.

The full interview airs at 12:30 p.m. today (Tuesday) on KRNV-News 4 in Reno.

About this blog

Ray Hagar is the political reporter for the Reno Gazette-Journal and a fifth-generation Nevadan. Hagar is also a co-host for the Nevada Newsmakers statewide television program. He is the co-author of "Johnson-Jeffries: Dateline Reno," a book about the 1910 "Fight of the Century" in Reno that pitted black world champion Jack Johnson against the "Great White Hope," Jim Jeffries